Scientific Method —

World Bank envisions a 4°C future

Its conclusion? Please, let's not do this.

Many governments have set a goal for limiting climate change: two degrees by the end of the century, and no more. However, most projections show we're lagging badly. Unless we accelerate a transition to renewables and nuclear, we're going to shoot right past that 2°C limit. But even as the hand-wringing about missed targets and bad trajectories has increased, it's been relatively rare to see a detailed analysis of the potential consequence. The World Bank has now stepped into that breach.

In a report released today, the World Bank analyzed the consequences of allowing temperatures to reach 4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Even the well understood problems—up to a meter of sea level rise, winter months that are warmer than our current summers—sound pretty ugly. The report also notes the possibility of tipping points and synergies make some of the impacts much harder to predict.

The report itself is a collaboration between the Bank's Global Expert Team for Climate Change Adaptation and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics. In addition to taking a different perspective on the problem of climate change, the report comes at a valuable time. It's been five years since the release of the fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the fifth isn't due until late next year.

So, what are the chances of adding an extra 4°C by the end of the century? The report estimates that, even if all countries are able to meet their current emissions pledges, there's still a 20 percent chance we'll hit 4°C by the end of the century. The longer we wait to meet those pledges, the harder it will be in part because it means we've already built fossil fuel infrastructure that has a life span of decades.

What does a world that much warmer look like? To give a sense of how hard it is to imagine, the report notes some points in the last glacial period were only 4.5°colder than present temperatures—and there were ice sheets covering a lot of the Northern Hemisphere. We've already hit levels of CO2 in the atmosphere that haven't been seen in over 15 million years. To reach 4°C, they'd have to roughly double again. And these changes would take place at a pace that probably has few geological precedents.

So, even the report's authors admit that predications are a challenge. Still, they do their best to try to paint a picture, and boy, is it grim.

Sea level would rise by a half-meter or more, putting lots of coastal infrastructure and plenty of people at risk. The typical summer temperatures would be the equivalent of our worst heat waves. In fact, the specifically note that normal temperatures in Russia would be similar to those of its recent heat wave, which killed 55,000 people and caused massive property damage. Meanwhile, the baseline winter temperatures would be equivalent to our current summers in most areas. Temperatures over land will rise faster than they do over the ocean, and some regions will be especially hard hit. The authors predict that typical temperatures in the Mediterranean will be up by roughly 9°C.

Rainfall patterns would shift dramatically, with some river basins seeing a reduction of over 20 percent in water while others get additional rainfall. That will add to the stresses on agriculture, where many crops will already be pushing up against temperature limits in current growth zones. Meanwhile, the level of ocean acidification driven by our emissions may stop coral reef growth as soon as the 2030s. Acidification may also begin reducing reefs by the end of the century.

All of that sounds pretty awful, but that's not the end of it. Even if atmospheric greenhouse gas levels were stabilized by the end of the century, it would take our planet time to reach a new equilibrium. Temperatures would continue to rise, with the global mean reaching 6° over pre-industrial levels. Sea levels would continue to rise, reaching somewhere between 1.5m and 5m above present levels. That later figure is higher than the storm surge that swept into Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In addition, the report raises the spectre of nonlinear events, commonly called tipping points, where a current equilibrium is shifted to a new state entirely. It points out there might be synergistic effects that could make a combination of tolerable impacts difficult to manage. For example, reduced rainfall, elevated temperatures, and saltwater intrusion from rising ocean levels could all have a negative impact on agriculture. At the same time, loss of port facilities to sea level rise could make importing crops from elsewhere a challenge.

If all of this is a bit shocking, then the report achieves its desired effect. "It is my hope that this report shocks us into action," said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. "Even for those of us already committed to fighting climate change, I hope it causes us to work with much more urgency." He said that the Bank's goal of economic development and poverty reduction could be met without pushing against planned emissions limits.

This report won't win over any converts. The projections for change are based on the output of climate models, and people who don't trust them won't suddenly start doing so. Critics of action on climate change will undoubtedly pick over the details. The report notes research had indicated droughts were increasing, but a reanalysis of data that's only a week old suggests those estimates were off. This doesn't mean every aspect of the report is suspect, but expect it to be treated that way.

Ultimately, the report could be a valuable wake up call for those who are willing to accept many of the conclusions of climate scientists. It's easy to accept that progress towards emissions reduction will be irregular, but the World Bank is clearly hoping to keep that acceptance from becoming complacency.

Horsecrap. Again and again you people foist that Austrian School supply-side crap on us and again and again it fails miserably. Look at the relationship between income growth, taxation rate, and division of wealth in the US over the course of the 20th Century and then tell me again how your so-called 'theory' works. It is garbage. It is contradictory to the actual measured numbers in the real world. No more thorough dismissal of any hypothesis can exist.

The TRUTH is that it is perfectly feasible to tax carbon, which in fact isn't even a tax because it is really just recovering the cost of actually burning the carbon, and since EVERYONE pays that cost equally guess what, the benefits should be paid back to everyone. Just because that doesn't fit with the fascistic view of "freedom" which passes for a philosophy on the right in the US today is not relevant. It is just and is simply giving people their due. Invest it in efficiency and renewables for that matter, or use it to lower other taxes, whatever. We can debate THAT half of the equation later.

What's happening in your comment, and probably thought on the matter, is that you're taking the BS you may have heard on networks like MSNBC and maybe FOX, and your attributing those erroneous rants to me. None of what you wrote applies to anything I wrote or to those two books.

There's plenty of this line of thought in this thread, but I'll pick on you. ;-)

On the broadest scale, you're right - no scientists think that CO2 doesn't cause some heat retention, that is basic physics. Of course, the Earth's troposphere is a very complex thing, with many different feedbacks and inputs. So, the real controversies are: what is the actual warming curve as CO2 increases, and do the other inputs to the system swamp the effect of CO2 increase?

In other words is there some 'magic pixie dust' that JUST HAPPENS to cancel out the large radiative forcing of CO2 + H2O added to the atmosphere because of the CO2. You don't find it to be highly dubious that this super convenient set of countervailing factors will apply? ONLY in the case of AGW too since clearly every other natural forcing changes the climate, often quite a bit. Sorry, this is ludicrous.

Er, you skipped the first question: what is the actual warming curve as CO2 increases? Even the IPCC models present quite a range of outcomes, and of course there is absolutely no guarantee that the reality follows any of them. There is some probability, but no one knows with certainity.

As to the 'magic pixie dust', I make no such claim. What I am claiming is that we don't yet know enough to accurately quantify the effect of CO2, methane, deforestation, etc. - more research is needed before committing to massive expenditures on questionable ventures such as wind farms. It is also absolutely the case that current science is not at the point of accurately understanding many of the variables involved. One example is the relationship between increased water evaporation, and the overall albedo of the Earth.

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On those questions, there is far less consensus. For instance, at the International Climate Change Conference held at the Heartland Institute (yeah I know a lot of you hate it, just as those on the other side hate the IPCC - however neither side can say there's nothing to learn in either case) several actual scientists ;-) debated the extent of warming, or even if the Earth might cool on a multidecadal scale. Then there is MIT Professor of Atmospheric Physics Richard Lindzen who maintains that real-world observations do not support IPCC models:

Richard Lindzen wrote:

Speaking methodically with flashes of humor — “I always feel that when the conversation turns to weather, people are bored.” — he said a basic problem with current computer climate models that show disastrous increases in temperature is that relatively small increases in atmospheric gases lead to large changes in temperatures in the models.

But, he said, “predictions based on high (climate) sensitivity ran well ahead of observations.”

Real-world observations do not support IPCC models, he said: “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced very little warming.”

A timely observation as we continue in a fifteen+ year stretch of no statistical warming, with CO2 concentration at "Hansen panic" levels. Nor has that heat been "hidden in the oceans", as the rate of sea level rise has decreased - again the opposite of the predictions.

What is the theoretical underpinning for those observations, true believers? I'm all ears...

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Ah yes, Richard Lindzen, the one lone semi-credibly climatologist, who JUST HAPPENS to be the one that is invited to chat it up at the Heartland Institute IPCC conference! ROFLMAO!

You should make some effort to read and understand material on which you're commenting. Lindzen was speaking at Sandia Labs, as reported in the extreme right-wing publication PhysOrg. ROFLMAO back at ya!

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Honestly, we DO need doubters, like ancient emperors are said to have employed a fool to whisper in their ears that they would die someday and that power is never absolute. Notice however that EVEN LINDZEN doesn't dispute the reality of AGW, he just tries to argue for a (rapidly becoming untenable) minimal level of CO2 sensitivity. In fact we have seen about a 0.8C temperature increase already, and we haven't even come close to equilibrium for the CO2 we have which indicates something like a 1.5-1.8C sensitivity. This is actually right smack in the midst of the IPCC range, discounting any 'tipping point' type disaster scenarios (IE once change gets up into the 4C range the uncertainties rise considerably).

I'm curious how you've established that we "haven't even come close to equilibrium" for current CO2? Please point me to your paper on that subject. I expect, in fact, that temperature equilibrium for any given level of CO2 is reached rather rapidly (at most a few years) - meaning current temperatures are quite close to equilibrium, especially given the diminishing returns of additional CO2 concentration to temperature.

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As for the whole "no change in 15 years" bullcrap, give it up, it has been debunked so many times now it is not even funny. If you can't even be bothered to know the difference between Heartland PR and reality then what's the point of having a discussion?

Of course there's been change (up and down as a matter of fact), what I said is "no statistical change". That is simply a matter of fact. The additional fact that it's been corroborated with decreasing rate of sea level rise absolutely flies in the face of "accepted" climate change rhetoric. CO2 is at a historical high, how in the world are temperatures maintaining stability?!?

As I've mentioned in other threads, we're nearing the peak of the current weak current solar cycle. Its low peak means it will have a long, low minimum. The next solar cycle after that (Cycle 25) is expected to be near-nonexistent in terms of sunspot activity, similar to other Grand Minima. So, it'll be a real-world experiment as to solar influence, as opposed to computer modeling. That should be interesting, and is one of the reasons for the cooling prediction I cited earlier.

Someone pointed out that Timmer wrote "Unless we accelerate a transition to renewables and nuclear, we're going to shoot right past that 2°C limit."

Seriously, renewables?? That's another feel good nonsense term. First assuming AGW to be as the hyped up IPCC reports say, there's no way you can justify inefficient renewables as opposed to ALL nuclear. There's no point pointing out why cause when it comes to AGW most Ars commenters are clueless and just parrot the religious-like mantras of the "green" BS.

I'd say that there is a very clear delineation between renewable and non-renewable. To wit; the former will replenish itself or can be replenished in such a time frame as to be able to be utilised as a power source in a sustainable manner.

Hydroelectric power generation is one such example, and there is no reason that it can't be used to supplement Nuclear power generation, especially since construction and maintenance of Hydroelectric dams is still considerably cheaper than and equivalent Nuclear facility. For southern areas Solar power is becoming more and more viable as well. Again, there is no reason that Solar should not be able to supplement nuclear power generation, especially for more remote regions where it is more economical to construct a small solar facility than to run HVDC lines from a Nuclear facility.

Both of these examples are as renewable as the sun is, and both have the benefit of being 'green'. To discount them entirely in favour of an all nuclear future is ignorant.

Maybe one day we'll have machines all over the world that can sustain 60 Megaampere z-pinch shots many times a second and somehow deal with the Gigaampere output, but until then diverse and sustainable power generation methods are a good thing.

The problem I see with the analyses for instance at "bravenewclimate" is that they fail to cost out the externalized costs. In fact they fail to even cost out many of the INTERNALIZED costs. For instance the "test case 15" fails to mention for nuclear power the cost of insurance (which is obviously a MAJOR cost), FUEL (either acquisition or disposal), nor cost of decommissioning (which so far for existing power plants is on the order of the cost of construction). Of course coal and etc if they were compared obviously have high externalities. Wind for instance OTOH the author of the case study arbitrarily decides is a total writedown at 25 years. This is highly unrealistic. The same is true for PV, 25 years is a pessimistic writedown. These are probably not huge factors but they do indicate a bias where nuclear seems, at least in this one study, to get a rather easy pass and shaved numbers.

There are deeper questions though. For instance criticizing wind for needing offsetting storage/generation is reasonable only if you are talking about a single isolated facility. As soon as you start talking about large numbers of wind turbines spread over a large geographic area like Western Europe you quickly find that storage is not needed, the wind is always blowing in some areas, or that you only need a very much smaller backup capacity which will see very little actual use.

PV is even harder to assess. For instance the PV installations in Germany which have gotten so much attention have proven to be FAR more cost-effective than would be indicated and in fact have proven to be a good strategy for lowering overall costs. This is because the power they produce is available at the peak use times and is locally generated, meaning it is usually displacing very expensive 'spot power'.

Combinations of SPV, wind, hydro, and geothermal power can, with aggressive efficiency gains, cover a LOT of the distance that is needed to go. Remember too, we aren't required to ENTIRELY stop burning fossil fuels, only cut back drastically. There's still room for some NG capacity, etc. While nuclear is always tempting to many people overall when you sort out all the costs it simply isn't all that impressive. As a medium term thing? Meh, I'm not fond of it, but we'll see. One of the big problems with nukes is just time to build, especially for new designs. 10 years is a minimum and there's simply not the construction capacity to build enough of them all at once to be a solution. The beauty of low density sources is that building capacity is quite easy and can be done in small increments when and where needed.

Where did I say carbon taxes destroy wealth? I said they hurt the most vulnerable. They drive up energy prices and hurt energy intensive businesses such as manufacturing. Manufacturers aren't suddenly going to pay huge fines or drop out of the industry. They'll simply move jobs elsewhere to a more lax country like India or China.

Both of these hurt the poor more than anyone else.

To the others I never stated I denied anthropogenic climate change myself. In fact I said the opposite. I did erroneously state that the science was not settled. Which was a misstep on my part.

No, you didn't say they destroyed wealth, you just said they would impoverish people. I understand you may not mean the same thing and if you look at say the US in isolation those can mean different things. However globally they don't, if wealth isn't destroyed then people must not get poorer. Again though, if say China doesn't want to levy sufficient carbon fees on its exports then the US will just levy them at the border. They'll quickly realize its better to put the money in THEIR pocket than in ours. At that point jobs aren't driven anywhere.

Of course there are going to be SOME economic costs, at least early on, for switching to non-carbon-intensive power. OTOH given that climate change is expensive and pollution and other negative effects are also expensive it isn't really terribly clear that once we start up the renewables curve we won't invoke a virtuous circle. In other words as your costs go down, and most costs for your generation capacity are front loaded with renewables as well, then you have more and more present cashflow with which to make more such investments even more quickly, while spinning off the externalized savings, which translates to even better economic numbers. Once you get over the initial hump you are ahead of your fossil fuel growth curve and never look back.

One of the things that fundamentally pains me about these discussions is the lack of challenges to conventional discourse about economics.

I keep coming back to this: mean real wages in the US have been static since 1973, and per capita GDP has more than doubled. Either we're measuring things wildly incorrectly, or we've had decades of exponential economic growth that has made no improvement in the income levels of ordinary people.

Shouldn't the increase in productivity mean that we could work half as many hours, get paid twice as much per hour, and live at the same standard of living while enjoying far more leisure, producing far less, and using fewer resources and producing less waste?

How often is it a trope used in advertising that changes in technology mean we must work harder, faster? Isn't that perfectly backwards? Shouldn't improvements in technology mean that we can accomplish the same goal with less effort?

When people insist that we can't bear the sacrifices we'd have to make to limit economic growth, I have to wonder why we're bearing the sacrifices we're making to enable economic growth that doesn't actually improve our lives.

I just want to say to you mr.FoolishOwl that your post is beautiful.

I think just the same.

And when i think about this topic, instantly comes to mind the Morpheus training speech in the matrix about "the system".

I'm curious how you've established that we "haven't even come close to equilibrium" for current CO2? Please point me to your paper on that subject. I expect, in fact, that temperature equilibrium for any given level of CO2 is reached rather rapidly (at most a few years) - meaning current temperatures are quite close to equilibrium, especially given the diminishing returns of additional CO2 concentration to temperature.

I'm curious how you've established that we "haven't even come close to equilibrium" for current CO2? Please point me to your paper on that subject. I expect, in fact, that temperature equilibrium for any given level of CO2 is reached rather rapidly (at most a few years) - meaning current temperatures are quite close to equilibrium, especially given the diminishing returns of additional CO2 concentration to temperature.

I saw this in the Independent, and thought interesting that big money is make a statment after New York got totally throttled by a storm. It seems unless it's on your doorstep it's not your problem. Well climate change is coming home USA.

In all seriousness, if the solution on the table is to keep ecomnic growth a priority, with what that brings (mass consumption) what ever solutions you put out will fail.

Horsecrap. Again and again you people foist that Austrian School supply-side crap on us and again and again it fails miserably. Look at the relationship between income growth, taxation rate, and division of wealth in the US over the course of the 20th Century and then tell me again how your so-called 'theory' works. It is garbage. It is contradictory to the actual measured numbers in the real world. No more thorough dismissal of any hypothesis can exist.

The TRUTH is that it is perfectly feasible to tax carbon, which in fact isn't even a tax because it is really just recovering the cost of actually burning the carbon, and since EVERYONE pays that cost equally guess what, the benefits should be paid back to everyone. Just because that doesn't fit with the fascistic view of "freedom" which passes for a philosophy on the right in the US today is not relevant. It is just and is simply giving people their due. Invest it in efficiency and renewables for that matter, or use it to lower other taxes, whatever. We can debate THAT half of the equation later.

What's happening in your comment, and probably thought on the matter, is that you're taking the BS you may have heard on networks like MSNBC and maybe FOX, and your attributing those erroneous rants to me. None of what you wrote applies to anything I wrote or to those two books.

No, I'm looking at the charts which show how lowering tax rates has no correlation with growth (actually it does, but it tends to be negative) and particularly how regressive taxes simply crush the fortunes of the working class without providing any real benefit. As others have said since the 1970's 100% of the growth in the economy has been reaped by the upper portions of society. In fact all that growth has amounted to nothing more than a massive windfall for them bought on the backs of the workers. It puts the entirety of this sort of economic thinking quite handily in perspective.

The problem is that each economic school has come along and looked at one narrow one-dimensional aspect of usually macroeconomics and national finance, or one ill-advised generalization about economic actors, and then generalized the crap out of that one concept and conflated it into an economic theory, which invariably are worth less than the paper they are printed on.

The better approach seems to be to look at what really happens and really works empirically and then build small scale models of certain processes which can be useful when you carry out some specific project. So you might in some situations you might find that a supply based answer does work, but it can't be generalized. In other situations a demand side answer works. In other cases no theory seems to hold at all and you can only rely on observation and history.

In any case, the point being that a carbon fee, again it is not a tax, does make sense. It may in fact not work well because there are usually 2nd order effects, but it is vastly better than sitting around pretending we can wait until we're SURE of what we're going to try and it is far far too late.

In life it USUALLY pays to be certain about things, but there are times when the highest payoff is to act without sufficient knowledge. This is usually true when information is scarce and of uncertain quality and the penalty of not acting is especially high (IE you would leap out of a burning building into darkness rather than die in the flames, this is rational).

I saw this in the Independent, and thought interesting that big money is make a statment after New York got totally throttled by a storm. It seems unless it's on your doorstep it's not your problem. Well climate change is coming home USA.

In all seriousness, if the solution on the table is to keep ecomnic growth a priority, with what that brings (mass consumption) what ever solutions you put out will fail.

Yeah, that's a good observation. I agree too, fundamentally the problem is that our whole economic model is built around growth and doesn't really work otherwise. It MIGHT actually work, but it wouldn't generate the huge fortunes that some people are after.

If the economics do not operate under the changing conditions, the economics will be forced to change.

If they do not operate under changing conditions, they will be destroyed. That what "do not operate" means, is it not?

What is your point?

That your conclusion did not follow.

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The point I am making is that if your opposition to making changes to mitigate the impact and scope of climate change is that it is not economically viable, then you need to change your economic system because climate change is happening and will be even more extreme without mitigation and scope adjustments.

I think your phrasing is disjoint.

Climate mitigation seems to entail taking all conventional power sources offline as soon as possible, regardless of economic impact. These will have a severe negative economic impact.

As for changing the economic system, I don't see that even being discussed, what I see discussed is severely limiting the availability of power and fuel and jacking their cost up to the extent that people cannot afford it. There's someone in this thread (I'm pretty sure) suggesting an oil cost of $4/liter as a solution. So what if it would cost $3 million to heat a home in an Ohio winter, think of the climate man.

To summarize, climate seems a secondary concern as mitigation does not seem especially survivable.

What gets me most about AGW deniers isn't that they completely ignore all the evidence: it's that they ignore the fact that regardless of responsibility for causes, we have no choice about trying to slow the warming process under way.

Debating who caused the GW problem is meaningless other than in an academic sense (or, I suppose for some, a feel good "well it wasn't my fault!" deniability). At this point we really need to be focused on solutions, and we have to start moving towards them. Unless you're some anti-family ( ) scrooge who just wants to plunder all you can now and not care about what things are going to be like for future generations (I won't say your own children, because clearly you either don't or shouldn't have any if you don't care about what conditions in 80-100 years will be).

That's what I fail to understand. The people who stand up shouting "but there's not PROOF it was CAUSED by humans" even while admitting it's ongoing, as if that changes the real world conclusion if we can't change the ongoing environmental cycle driving it.

Beyond the AGW deniers, people who still deny global warming at all are simply too delusional at this point to even be bothered to try to reason with.

Yeah, that's a good observation. I agree too, fundamentally the problem is that our whole economic model is built around growth and doesn't really work otherwise. It MIGHT actually work, but it wouldn't generate the huge fortunes that some people are after.

There is nothing in our economic system *requiring* growth. Growth is only a requirement if you want to maximize profits quarter after quarter after quarter. It's a Wall Street kind of thang, not a Market Street kind of thang.

What currency you base an economy on doesn't magically change basic economic principles.

Several of the things we have based them on are explicitly not a currency. Barter is a good example of a non-currency economy.

But more importantly, the claims of economic damage are ridiculous on their face. What is destroying our environment is not our economic system. What is destroying our environment are the choices we are making. There is nothing inherent in economics that makes someone buy a Subruban rather than a Prius or Jetta TDI. There is nothing inherent in economics that makes a person have four kids instead of two. There is nothing in economics that makes a person build a home without considering its overall energy consumption. There is nothing in economics that makes us irrationally defend expensive and dirty coal at the expense of cheap and clean nuclear.

Making just the changes I mentioned above would alone have dramatic impact, and not harm us economically in the slighest. And yet there is resistence, lots and lots of resistence.

If you want to avoid damage to the economy, then stop denying the issue and go promote economically friendly solutions. They exist, but the party that *should* be pushing them is instead pretending there is no problem.

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Carbon taxes for example have many economic consequences that disportionately affect the most vulnerable. Either through higher energy prices that hurt the poor the most or simply move the source of pollutants to a less regulated part of the globe taking jobs with them.

If you choose to structure them this way that will certainly be the impact. Of course you can choose to structure them other ways, and there are dozens of papers on this topic.

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It isn't the best approach to the carbon problem. In fact it's absolutely terrible and leaves us worse off.

Horsecrap. Again and again you people foist that Austrian School supply-side crap on us and again and again it fails miserably. Look at the relationship between income growth, taxation rate, and division of wealth in the US over the course of the 20th Century and then tell me again how your so-called 'theory' works. It is garbage. It is contradictory to the actual measured numbers in the real world. No more thorough dismissal of any hypothesis can exist.

The TRUTH is that it is perfectly feasible to tax carbon, which in fact isn't even a tax because it is really just recovering the cost of actually burning the carbon, and since EVERYONE pays that cost equally guess what, the benefits should be paid back to everyone. Just because that doesn't fit with the fascistic view of "freedom" which passes for a philosophy on the right in the US today is not relevant. It is just and is simply giving people their due. Invest it in efficiency and renewables for that matter, or use it to lower other taxes, whatever. We can debate THAT half of the equation later.

What's happening in your comment, and probably thought on the matter, is that you're taking the BS you may have heard on networks like MSNBC and maybe FOX, and your attributing those erroneous rants to me. None of what you wrote applies to anything I wrote or to those two books.

You quoted Von Mises and then dissed someone else for maybe watching MSNBC or Fox. You lost before you ever started. Mises was a crackpot and his economic theories might be the most disproven in the history of economics. If you want to make an economic case, start with a credible economic theory.

No, that is what you chose to take from it becuase you seem obsessed with the idea that if other nations are not doing anything we have no reason to do anything.

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Your first words show that you are out to create a problem.

How so?

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Yeah, me too. So what?

So propose a solution. That is what engineers do.

Oh, right, I forgot. You are the guy who jumps into these threads and snipes at things continually while refusing to put forward any ideas or beliefs of your own. In fact, you've been banned for that here before. I see you are following your usual trend.

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You did not respond to the finger pointing, you responded to my response to the finger pointing. Looks to me like you are out to defend any finger pointing at the 'West'.

Nope, I am here to say we need to do our part and when we do we will have a podium upon which to pressure others. Until we do something we have no moral authority on the topic. Not that you want us to anyway.

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If so, only until they could copy them.

Perhaps, but that is a problem regardless. Irrelevent point to this discussion, and even if it is the case so what, it would still help resolve the problem.

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Interestingly, the assumption that the American people are idiots seems to be the starting assumption in this thread.

As long as the american people keep voting for people who are denialists and making personal choices that exacerbate the problem then yes, they are indeed idiots on this topic.

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I've seen what you consider a solution to finger pointing, attack anyone who objects to it. My observation is that your words and actions do not correspond to each other.

Really? I drive a modern efficient clean diesel, carpool to work, am working on insulating and updating my 50's era house, and have capped myself at two children. I recycle and buy local when I can. In other words I put my money where my mouth is.

You consider me to be finger pointing because I call you out for your lack of contribution and sniping on these threads. If you can't handle it, either get lost or start contributing.

Regardless of climate impact, can we move away from carbon based sources of fuel, simply because there are better options for a lot of uses, it's cleaner, and it involves buying a lot less oil from people who, in general, seem to hate the rest of the world?

I detest this argument. It's basically ceding ground to the deniers, saying, "even if you're right, we should still do these things for these other reasons."

Fuck that. We're right, they're wrong, and we should do the right things for the right reasons.

Even worse, by ceding the anthropomorphic global warming argument, you've basically turned it into a matter of economy and politics. People can always argue the economics of moving off of oil so fast. "Let's transition slower, move more slowly. It's not like it's destroying the environment," they can say, because you gave up the main argument.

After all, if we pretend that AGW doesn't exist, there's no real rush, is there? Whether it takes 10 years or 50, if there really is a viable economic reason for transitioning to something else, we'll get there eventually, right? Why force the issue so soon? Why have all these carbon caps and targets if AGW isn't real?

When you cede the main reason for doing something, you basically give up hope of getting it done in time. Assuming we haven't already passed the point of no return (which I'm fairly sure we have).

To most people this is an economic issue. Plus, you are making an assumption that it cedes the AGW argument.

Why do you need to cede that argument if you find other reasons for people to go along with it? Do not let a desire of "I am right, you are wrong, you must acknowledge my intellectual superiority!" distract from what the true goal is.

Climate mitigation seems to entail taking all conventional power sources offline as soon as possible, regardless of economic impact. These will have a severe negative economic impact.

As for changing the economic system, I don't see that even being discussed, what I see discussed is severely limiting the availability of power and fuel and jacking their cost up to the extent that people cannot afford it. There's someone in this thread (I'm pretty sure) suggesting an oil cost of $4/liter as a solution. So what if it would cost $3 million to heat a home in an Ohio winter, think of the climate man.

To summarize, climate seems a secondary concern as mitigation does not seem especially survivable.

In other words, you are arguing against a strawman. These are not the solutions others are proposing, or they are only part of larger solutions that address the concerns you raise. I would suggest reading the actual proposals rather than these caricatures of proposals.

The World Bank. The people who are supposed to understand finance, yet here we are in the midst of a global financial meltdown. These people want to advise us on climate change? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

The Free Enterprisers. People who are supposed to understand finance, yet here we are in the midst of a global financial meltdown AND an ecological disaster that both could have been curbed with appropriate legislation that they refuse to allow. These people want to advise us on policy? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

one typo in a thousand or more pages of highly technical content? sounds like they've done a truly outstanding job there.

You don't get it do you? IPCC used article form a newspaper instead of the original scientific paper. Should they have used the original scientific paper, they would have avoided this embarrassment.

It's funny that you want to hold their feet to the fire over citation issues but you yourself confuse "a newspaper" with a couple of grey literature sources like the World Wildlife Fund and UNESCO, which were cited in the IPCC report surrounding that mistake. Working Group I is the group that has to stick exclusively to the scientific literature. WG I summarizes the current state of the science by itself. Working Group II, the one that included the typo from the WWF report, is not so limited. It's the group that is responsible for deriving our best guess of how climate change will impact economies, global and regional. This is how the IPCC is organized. The error appeared in the WGII report, which is why it didn't come from the scientific literature but the "grey literature." And that mistake doesn't impact the WG's conclusions significantly. So the extent to which this mistake damages the credibility of the whole IPCC is virtually nil, especially since the error was later recognized and corrected.

Now if you want to go after errors of substance instead of errors of style (omg a typo!!!!), it might behoove you to know that ice is disappearing faster than the IPCC predicts, especially in the Arctic. At the time of the last IPCC report, we had a less firm grasp on the relevant science of glaciers and sea ice than we do even today, five years later. It's hopeful than the synthesis next report will be able to give more accurate information since it will be based on more up to date science. Your accusation that the IPCC is not using science is totally, completely, pants-on-head-and-licking-at-taser wrong. Hopefully you'll have as much grace as the IPCC did now that this error has been pointed out to you.

As for changing the economic system, I don't see that even being discussed, what I see discussed is severely limiting the availability of power and fuel and jacking their cost up to the extent that people cannot afford it. There's someone in this thread (I'm pretty sure) suggesting an oil cost of $4/liter as a solution. So what if it would cost $3 million to heat a home in an Ohio winter, think of the climate man.

So what would it take to make you change your habits? Right now it costs 75 cents a litre for American gasoline. My car gets about 6l/100km so for going coast to coast lets say 5,000 km, coast to coast 300 litres or $225.00 that is insanely cheap. Lets say it cost double $450 would that change things, how about $900? What would it take?

The setup of the US is having long commutes and suburbs, going across town to go to the Walmart to save a few bucks. Even doubling gasoline prices would have significant changes. Having a huge car today isn't a very large hardship, so why wouldn't you? What would make you change your habits?

The prices for food will go up, general stuff will go up. People's take home will go up as taxation gets pulled from gas instead of income taxes. Things would change.

As for changing the economic system, I don't see that even being discussed, what I see discussed is severely limiting the availability of power and fuel and jacking their cost up to the extent that people cannot afford it. There's someone in this thread (I'm pretty sure) suggesting an oil cost of $4/liter as a solution. So what if it would cost $3 million to heat a home in an Ohio winter, think of the climate man.

So what would it take to make you change your habits?

Which of my habits do you claim needs changing?

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Right now it costs 75 cents a litre for American gasoline.

75 (U.S. cents per litre) = 2.84 U.S. dollars per US gallon

Where do you buy gas, I just paid about $3.75 per gallon yesterday.

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My car gets about 6l/100km so for going coast to coast lets say 5,000 km, coast to coast 300 litres or $225.00 that is insanely cheap. Lets say it cost double $450 would that change things, how about $900? What would it take?

As I had said, the desire is to make transportation so expensive as to be unavailable. Too bad this will also kill essential transportation like to your job and the grocery store as well. That seems to be a price you are willing to pay however.

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The setup of the US is having long commutes and suburbs, going across town to go to the Walmart to save a few bucks. Even doubling gasoline prices would have significant changes. Having a huge car today isn't a very large hardship, so why wouldn't you? What would make you change your habits?

Well, death and starvation would do it and when no one can afford transportation (which you in your infinite wisdom you apparently deem 100% frivolous and non-essential) we shall start seeing this habit changing change of state,

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The prices for food will go up, general stuff will go up.

And employment will go down. What a wonderful way to help a recession.

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People's take home will go up as taxation gets pulled from gas instead of income taxes. Things would change.

Climate mitigation seems to entail taking all conventional power sources offline as soon as possible, regardless of economic impact. These will have a severe negative economic impact.

As for changing the economic system, I don't see that even being discussed, what I see discussed is severely limiting the availability of power and fuel and jacking their cost up to the extent that people cannot afford it. There's someone in this thread (I'm pretty sure) suggesting an oil cost of $4/liter as a solution. So what if it would cost $3 million to heat a home in an Ohio winter, think of the climate man.

To summarize, climate seems a secondary concern as mitigation does not seem especially survivable.

In other words, you are arguing against a strawman.

Not at all, the poster 'Mydrrin' has been good enough to make my point.

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These are not the solutions others are proposing,

Your denial changes nothing.

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or they are only part of larger solutions that address the concerns you raise.

You think yelling 'strawman' addresses anyone's concerns?

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I would suggest reading the actual proposals rather than these caricatures of proposals.

So tell me, what is the intent of Cap and Trade and how do you claim it's supposed to work?

As I had said, the desire is to make transportation so expensive as to be unavailable. Too bad this will also kill essential transportation like to your job and the grocery store as well. That seems to be a price you are willing to pay however.

Again, disingenuousness from you. As you well know if you double the price of gas the solution from an economic point of view is to drive a car that has twice the fuel economy. Which is currently a primary goal of the Obama administration.

This does not 'kill essential transportation' it simply adjusts the economics of it to be more in line with the reality of its true costs so the market can be rational. That rationality includes choosing transportation choices that make better economic sense(trains, electric cars, busses, etc).

Not that I expect you to engage what someone says rather than the strawmen you concoct.

Are you that obtuse? What habits need changing? What board are you discussing on? The one where I am discussing where people need to reduce their carbon footprint, to coin a popular phrase.

Europeans have had $2 a litre for a long time. Seems like they aren't dying in the streets.

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As I had said, the desire is to make transportation so expensive as to be unavailable. Too bad this will also kill essential transportation like to your job and the grocery store as well. That seems to be a price you are willing to pay however.

Why do you use such hyperbole. Really? People will adapt, purchase smaller cars, choose to not go cross town as often, choose to live closer to work, play closer to their homes. You know change habits. It definitely would not be the end of times. How to conclude that employment will go down? Companies and people will still need to get the stuff done they need done today. There will be different dynamics but life will go on.

Economics work on the principles we set forth. If we choose to change our economics to accommodate scientific reality, we can do so. A method that has worked in the past is to simply internalize costs of a given activity, forcing its economic value to reflect reality rather than subsidy. That is likely the best approach to the carbon problem, and it has proven to work well in the past as it did when Nixon first enacted it in regards to other pollutants.

You seem to be talking about political economy and not the science (?) of economics.

No, that is what you chose to take from it becuase you seem obsessed with the idea that if other nations are not doing anything we have no reason to do anything.

If you read this as anything but explicit blame for only the 'West', you can't read.

-- omnimodis78 -- Let's also not forget that the current situation was put in motion by a European phenomenon-- (Industrial Revolution), greatly exasperated by a century of Western irresponsibility to blindly-- poison this planet. Let's keep the blame where it belongs, and it really does belong with-- the West.

Maybe you need to respond to the poster omnimodis78's obsession with the 'West'?

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Your first words show that you are out to create a problem.

How so?

By denying the clear words of omnimodis78 and somehow attributing what was posted to me.

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Yeah, me too. So what?

So propose a solution. That is what engineers do.

I don't think there is a viable solution today.

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Oh, right, I forgot. You are the guy who jumps into these threads and snipes at things continually while refusing to put forward any ideas or beliefs of your own. In fact, you've been banned for that here before. I see you are following your usual trend.

WTF? Look, I realize that you guys don't know what to do with any post that you can't respond to with a cut and paste a from your sole source of information, skepticalscience, so what more is there to say?

And I have no need to post beliefs or ideas of my own, you chaps have been good enough to assign a whole mess of them to me, and then get real upset when I don't act as if that was what I has posted.

Face it, you are reading from a script, not holding an actual discussion. And you get real upset at any deviations.

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You did not respond to the finger pointing, you responded to my response to the finger pointing. Looks to me like you are out to defend any finger pointing at the 'West'.

Nope,

Yep.

-- omnimodis78 -- Let's also not forget that the current situation was put in motion by a European phenomenon-- (Industrial Revolution), greatly exasperated by a century of Western irresponsibility to blindly-- poison this planet. Let's keep the blame where it belongs, and it really does belong with-- the West.

This clear simple finger pointing, you did not respond to it. Clearly you don't object to finger pointing per se. I'm not clear exactly what it is you are objecting to either.

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I am here to say we need to do our part and when we do we will have a podium upon which to pressure others. Until we do something we have no moral authority on the topic. Not that you want us to anyway.

So you want to pressure others and think yourself a moral authority. Nothing unexpected about that I guess.

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If so, only until they could copy them.

Perhaps, but that is a problem regardless. Irrelevent point to this discussion, and even if it is the case so what, it would still help resolve the problem.

Probably not, their production facilities have caused some of the worst pollution in the world.

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Yeah, it's not what you do that counts, it's who you are.

As long as the american people keep voting for people who are denialists and making personal choices that exacerbate the problem then yes, they are indeed idiots on this topic.

Gee, if only we were like the Chinese, eh?

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I've seen what you consider a solution to finger pointing, attack anyone who objects to it. My observation is that your words and actions do not correspond to each other.

Really? I drive a modern efficient clean diesel, carpool to work, am working on insulating and updating my 50's era house, and have capped myself at two children. I recycle and buy local when I can. In other words I put my money where my mouth is.

Too bad everyone else is not like you, eh?

What this has to do with the fact that you don't actually object to finger pointing is not clear to me,

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You consider me to be finger pointing because I call you out for your lack of contribution and sniping on these threads. If you can't handle it, either get lost or start contributing.

No, I never accused you of finger pointing, I did say that you don't object to actual finger pointing (at least when it's a finger pointing at the 'West' anyway) and I think you've proven that already.

That's the problem with reading from a script BTW, you never understand what others are saying.

As for changing the economic system, I don't see that even being discussed, what I see discussed is severely limiting the availability of power and fuel and jacking their cost up to the extent that people cannot afford it. There's someone in this thread (I'm pretty sure) suggesting an oil cost of $4/liter as a solution. So what if it would cost $3 million to heat a home in an Ohio winter, think of the climate man.

- I didn't know homes in Ohio require 750000 liters of heating oil each winter. Live and learn- Perhaps if the price of heating oil were higher, people in Ohio would build and/or insulate their houses differently in order to waste less energy.

As I had said, the desire is to make transportation so expensive as to be unavailable. Too bad this will also kill essential transportation like to your job and the grocery store as well. That seems to be a price you are willing to pay however.

Assume that an American pays $3.75 per gallon for gasoline.Assume also that an American's car gets 20 MPG.Assume also that an American drives 20 miles to and from work.

Then that American pays $7.50 per workday to drive to-and-from work, where he will earn maybe somewhere between $100 and $400. If the price of gas doubles, he will pay $15 instead. This will impact his income, but not be unmanageable. If the price of gas quadruples, he will pay $30, which will be a large bite (especially for those on the lower end of the income range), and might perhaps induce the American to invest in a) a more fuel efficient means of transportation, b) carpool buddies, c) a home closer to work, d) work closer to home, e) a modern, efficient public transportation system, etc. etc. All desirable outcomes.

Horsecrap. Again and again you people foist that Austrian School supply-side crap on us and again and again it fails miserably. Look at the relationship between income growth, taxation rate, and division of wealth in the US over the course of the 20th Century and then tell me again how your so-called 'theory' works. It is garbage. It is contradictory to the actual measured numbers in the real world. No more thorough dismissal of any hypothesis can exist.

The TRUTH is that it is perfectly feasible to tax carbon, which in fact isn't even a tax because it is really just recovering the cost of actually burning the carbon, and since EVERYONE pays that cost equally guess what, the benefits should be paid back to everyone. Just because that doesn't fit with the fascistic view of "freedom" which passes for a philosophy on the right in the US today is not relevant. It is just and is simply giving people their due. Invest it in efficiency and renewables for that matter, or use it to lower other taxes, whatever. We can debate THAT half of the equation later.

What's happening in your comment, and probably thought on the matter, is that you're taking the BS you may have heard on networks like MSNBC and maybe FOX, and your attributing those erroneous rants to me. None of what you wrote applies to anything I wrote or to those two books.

No, I'm looking at the charts which show how lowering tax rates has no correlation with growth (actually it does, but it tends to be negative) and particularly how regressive taxes simply crush the fortunes of the working class without providing any real benefit. As others have said since the 1970's 100% of the growth in the economy has been reaped by the upper portions of society. In fact all that growth has amounted to nothing more than a massive windfall for them bought on the backs of the workers. It puts the entirety of this sort of economic thinking quite handily in perspective.

The problem is that each economic school has come along and looked at one narrow one-dimensional aspect of usually macroeconomics and national finance, or one ill-advised generalization about economic actors, and then generalized the crap out of that one concept and conflated it into an economic theory, which invariably are worth less than the paper they are printed on.

The better approach seems to be to look at what really happens and really works empirically and then build small scale models of certain processes which can be useful when you carry out some specific project. So you might in some situations you might find that a supply based answer does work, but it can't be generalized. In other situations a demand side answer works. In other cases no theory seems to hold at all and you can only rely on observation and history.

In any case, the point being that a carbon fee, again it is not a tax, does make sense. It may in fact not work well because there are usually 2nd order effects, but it is vastly better than sitting around pretending we can wait until we're SURE of what we're going to try and it is far far too late.

In life it USUALLY pays to be certain about things, but there are times when the highest payoff is to act without sufficient knowledge. This is usually true when information is scarce and of uncertain quality and the penalty of not acting is especially high (IE you would leap out of a burning building into darkness rather than die in the flames, this is rational).

Since the 1970's wealth has been transfered up to the 1%? I wonder why that is. I could tell you but it's critical thinking to understand.

You said "It puts the entirety of this sort of economic thinking quite handily in perspective." What economic thinking? I bet you couldn't describe it instead of quoting straw man arguments that others have made.

Horsecrap. Again and again you people foist that Austrian School supply-side crap on us and again and again it fails miserably. Look at the relationship between income growth, taxation rate, and division of wealth in the US over the course of the 20th Century and then tell me again how your so-called 'theory' works. It is garbage. It is contradictory to the actual measured numbers in the real world. No more thorough dismissal of any hypothesis can exist.

The TRUTH is that it is perfectly feasible to tax carbon, which in fact isn't even a tax because it is really just recovering the cost of actually burning the carbon, and since EVERYONE pays that cost equally guess what, the benefits should be paid back to everyone. Just because that doesn't fit with the fascistic view of "freedom" which passes for a philosophy on the right in the US today is not relevant. It is just and is simply giving people their due. Invest it in efficiency and renewables for that matter, or use it to lower other taxes, whatever. We can debate THAT half of the equation later.

What's happening in your comment, and probably thought on the matter, is that you're taking the BS you may have heard on networks like MSNBC and maybe FOX, and your attributing those erroneous rants to me. None of what you wrote applies to anything I wrote or to those two books.

You quoted Von Mises and then dissed someone else for maybe watching MSNBC or Fox. You lost before you ever started. Mises was a crackpot and his economic theories might be the most disproven in the history of economics. If you want to make an economic case, start with a credible economic theory.

I guess this is an example of the ignorance of people or is it the result of the US education system? I did not quote Mises. Those two books are by Henry Hazlitt and Frederic Bastiat, respectively.

As for the rest of your comment, it's hopelessly erroneous. Maybe you should try critical thinking instead of repeating what others tell you.